1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of luminaires, more particularly to the field of luminaires that may be installed in a recessed manner.
2. Description of Related Art
Light fixtures or luminaires are commonly used in a variety of commercial and residential settings. While many types of luminaires exist, one popular type is a recessed bulb luminaire. The advantage of a recessed bulb luminaire, depending on the design, is that housing of the luminaire may be mounted in the ceiling or wall so that it does not noticeably extend beyond the mounting surface, thus providing a cleaner appearance when the luminaire is installed.
A luminaire being installed in a ceiling is typically installed by first mounting a housing to a one or more ceiling supports so that the housing is aligned with the planned surface of the ceiling. This alignment process can be difficult as the actual surface is not there when the housing is being aligned. Next a surface material, which may be drywall, drop ceiling tiles or any other suitable surface material, is installed after the housing of the luminaire is installed. To allow the luminaire to function, a hole is provided in the surface. Often a trim plate with a transparent lens and a flange is attached to the housing so as to cover up an edge of the hole, as well as internal components of the luminaire. The result is a recessed luminaire that provides light as desired while provide a relatively pleasing aesthetic appearance.
Once the luminaire is installed, the bulb may need to be aimed. Current luminaires make it difficult to aim the bulb (or lamp) while the luminaire is on, thus adjusting the aim often requiring turning the power off, partially disassembling the luminaire, making an adjustment in the bulb aiming assembly, reassembling the luminaire and then turning the power back on to see if the adjustment correctly aimed the bulb in the desired direction. This process is made more troublesome if one or more lens and/or filters are used to shape the light emitted from the bulb because often the lens and/or filters need to be carefully orientated. Plainly, such a process is tedious and time consuming and thus expensive; however, such a process allows the luminaire to provide a variety of lighting effects in addition to down lighting, such as accent or wall-wash lighting.
Eventually the bulb in the luminaire will fail, either catastrophically or due to reduced light output, and will need to be replaced. Current luminaires make it difficult to quickly change the bulb. In addition, sometimes the luminaire must be partially disassembled when the bulb is changed, thus potentially modifying the aim of the luminaire that was previously painstakingly set. As substantial time and money may have been invested in aiming the bulb at a particular point in the first place, modifying of the aiming of the bulb during the process of changing a bulb is generally undesirable. As can be appreciated, this is a significant problem for installations where a larger number of luminaires are installed and each luminaire is separately aimed so as to provide a desired lighting effect.
To make matters worse, as noted above, certain luminaires include filters or accessory lenses that provide additional visual effects such as grids or other light patterns. Often the light patterns are designed to have a particular effect and therefore both the aiming of the bulb and the orientation of the filters need to be relatively precise. However, current luminaires tend to allow or cause the filters to be inadvertently moved during the changing of the bulb, thus undesirably changing the effect the original light pattern was supposed to provide. Therefore, improvements in luminaire design would be desirable for certain circumstances.